APHAN-
TASTIC
ISM
Painted in red white
and blue-green white gold.
My childhood but
for the half-life
of me.
I can’t see past my long-term memory loss
Trying to remember a scene, yet I know
the scene so well as if it was yesterday.
My blind imagination, aphantasia on top
of not seeing a vision in my mind, I know
a snipers bullet, lodged in the metal window
frame behind my sister's head, crack went
shattered glass through my broken mind
remembering to forget.
Juxtaposing the in and outer self like a back-
wards law of rising not to fall inhale ex-
Haling and floating up to the top.
The moon landing was on tv and a line of
tanks entered the street like the aliens
Had landed. My brother took a picture, one
Of the best war footage photos I had ever
seen on the tin-like camera that was like
something from a lucky bag, cheap.
Don’t forget this was 69’, the swinging sixties
Was a world away this wasn’t Carnaby Street
this was Etna drive at the foot of cave hill
napoleons nose. 2023 remembering to forget.
The street went right up to Crumlin Road
and over the moon. I can only talk
about this trauma my sister now
is dead she killed her-
Self because of this phoenix rising romantic
Irish nonsense. This is the terrible beauty
that is born in the words of W.B. seen through
a cracked glass-like peering into reality my
sister's forlorn. I am dis-
able to spout this from my
broken
gutterance.
Aphantasia distances grief from my no mind's
eye, and my traumatic memory was erased
thank fuck. I don’t think my broken mind is strong
enough for these bullet syllables to ricochet
of my road.
Words find a rat-ta-tat rhythm
a lambeg-borhan beat of the bleeding street
in my mother's' Dublin tongue. Lost an anagram
of lost- lives-violets.
I lay these words by your grave, a virtual homage
hold this grief of words in a negative capability.
I brush the soiled tears from your eyes and you
wake in me swimming and glistening in mine.
These words are from Light on Stone's first poem
I had published was for you. Laylow this is
my remembrance to you, Stephanie, lylo out
there on the bluestone road the olde smuggler's
route , keep your head down. Love A x see you
soon in plotted land R.I.P.
Beside a Quaker
graveyard where
Anne fox the
daughter of George fox
founder of Quakerism
no headstone just a simple
mound of earth if only
Stephanie fox uttered art though.
Talking trauma in a poetic form. Writ for
Robert Lowell who said: ‘Yet why not say
What happened.’
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